Little support for sitting PNM Toco/Sangre Grande MP

The To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is sup­port­ing for­mer coun­cil­lor Lor­raine Heath as their choice of can­di­date in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions over in­cum­bent MP Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith.

The de­ci­sion to sup­port Heath was tak­en re­cent­ly ac­cord­ing to the chair­man of the To­co/San­gre Grande par­ty group 12 and elec­tions of­fi­cer of the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive John Ma­son.

Heath, who has a law de­gree, works as Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary at the Land Set­tle­ment Agency.

She won the San­gre Grande North East seat for the PNM in the 2013 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Thurs­day, Ma­son told Guardian Me­dia that Heath won 52 per cent of the ex­ec­u­tive’s votes while ac­tivist Roger Mon­roe at­tained 36 per cent.

He said Jen­nings-Smith got the least sup­port.

The con­stituen­cy has 27 par­ty groups.

Ma­son said al­though a date for screen­ing of the three nom­i­nees is yet to be an­nounced, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has the pre­rog­a­tive to se­lect who he wants to rep­re­sent To­co/San­gre Grande seat which is con­sid­ered a mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy.

In last De­cem­ber’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion, the PNM won three elec­toral dis­tricts in San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) to the UNC’s five.

The UNC was able to snatch dis­tricts San­gre Grande North West and Man­zanil­la from the PNM, tak­ing con­trol of the cor­po­ra­tion.

For­mer chair­man of the SGRC Ter­ry Ron­don had blamed the par­ty’s poor choice of can­di­dates for their de­feat at the polls.

Ma­son said the PNM can­not af­ford to make the same mis­takes again at this year’s cru­cial gen­er­al elec­tion and need­ed to se­lect a strong nom­i­nee who the peo­ple favoured and will ral­ly be­hind.

“Hope­ful­ly we have learned from our lessons from the 2019 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion. The PNM loss the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to the UNC be­cause the par­ty se­lect­ed the wrong can­di­dates...can­di­dates who the peo­ple did not want nor sup­port­ed.”

He said the par­ty paid an ul­ti­mate price for their bad judge­ment.

Ma­son said he was not sur­prised that Heath who is high­ly qual­i­fied and known as a peo­ple’s per­son got the ma­jor­i­ty back­ing from the con­stituen­cy’s ex­ec­u­tive and par­ty groups.

“No­body is re­al­ly sup­port­ing her (Jen­nings-Smith). I hate for them things to hap­pen but that is the re­al­i­ty.”

Ma­son said the ex­ec­u­tive want­ed new blood and some­one who can present and faith­ful­ly serve the PNM for the next five years.

“We don’t want the con­stituen­cy to be a mar­gin­al seat again. So the first thing we had to do was se­lect a per­son who can build the in­sti­tu­tion. Once you build the in­sti­tu­tion your par­ty sup­port base will be there.”

He said Heath has been very ac­tive in the con­stituen­cy which she grew up in.

“She con­tin­ues to work in the con­stituen­cy. Lor­raine nev­er walked away from her re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ser­vice and that is what the peo­ple have recog­nised and want. We had been ask­ing her to throw her hat in the ring for quite a while now.”

Ma­son said Heath filed her nom­i­na­tions pa­pers on Wednes­day night.

“If she had done that ear­li­er she would have se­cured more sup­port from the ex­ec­u­tives. We had been try­ing to con­vince her for weeks to file her pa­pers. And fi­nal­ly she made up her mind at the eleventh hour.”

He said the ex­ec­u­tive al­so had their eyes on coun­cil­lor Ron­don to rep­re­sent the par­ty at the polls.

How­ev­er, Ma­son said Ron­don who is re­cu­per­at­ing from back surgery had to de­cline.

A source in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress camp said Nichol­son Sookoo, Sookram Ali and a fe­male banker filed nom­i­na­tion pa­pers weeks ago to con­test the con­stituen­cy but are yet to be screened by its com­mit­tee.